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Brian Kay

BRASS INSTRUMENT INSTRUCTOR

Position/Fingering Charts for Trombone, Trumpet, Euphonium (Baritione), Tuba, and Horn

Not Your Average Chart - Please take a look!

The arrangement of these charts is less commonly seen but very useful. Its in a simple grid with all the notes in a given position or fingering in the same column. The higher the note, the higher it is on the column. There are seven columns, one for every position or valve combination. (In the French Horn chart, I simplified the chart for beginners by only listing the five valve combinations commonly used.) You can clearly see how the notes go down by half step as you read from left to right. In essence, the chart is organized like the instrument.

I keep this chart right on the stand with students that are not intimately familiar with the layout of the instrument. I constantly point to the chart to show them how what they are playing relates to "the lay of the land". If they play a lip setting too high, I show them on the chart what note they accidentally played, and how the real note is lower. I show them how lip slurs work by singing the slur and pointing to the chart. For beginners, I circle the first few notes of the Bb scale, so they can see the notes they have learned in relation to the whole instrument.

The layout is designed to communicate how the horn is "organized" and is less visually intimidating than your average chart. I first encountered a layout of this type in Scott Whitener's excellent book, A Complete Guide to Brass Instruments and Pedagogy.

The Charts (Adobe Acrobat Format .pdf)

 

Trombone Sheet Music

My Intermediate Methods